According to the Hiltons, Salalah, Oman which is nestled near the Qara Mountains is the best candidate for Nephi’s land Bountiful. They feel that this area can satisfy the criteria established by the Astons in a much better manner than Wadi-Sayq, although not necessarily according to the Astons’ interpretation. The Hiltons write that one reason the Astons looked beyond the village of Salalah for the land Bountiful was that a frankincense road from the desert was not to be considered because most of the frankincense was “rarely transported overland from Dhufar.” Since the Aston article in 1991, a widely published discovery was reported of the ancient Arabic city of Ubar. This city referred to as “Atlantis of the Sands” by T. E. Lawrence was located by high-tech images from the satellite Landsat 5, Shuttle Challenger’s Imaging Radar B and by the French SPOT Satellite.
The New York Times carried an article by John Noble Wilford on April 21, 1992 which said the new-found city “was a bustling caravan center as early as 2000 B.C. A major emporium in the ancient frankincense trade.” Ubar is located 90 miles inland from the sea at Salalah (see illustration). Also on this same date, the Deseret News (page A3) added that a second city “even bigger than Ubar” had been identified 20 miles from Salalah. These two recent discoveries establish the route of the ancient frankincense trail from the sea port at Salalah 20 miles northwest to this second site and another 70 miles to Ubar, proving the major use of overland roads to export frankincense from Salalah, even before Lehi’s day.
Thus, the old frankincense road comes through the desolate sand and gravel desert, through the newly discovered city of Ubar, over the Qara Mountains to the northwest, and down to the extended coastal plain of Salalah, which is ten miles deep at is greatest width (from the sea) and about 50 miles long. The fertile coastal area extends to the west as far as Wadi Sayq. The Qara Mountains encircle this little plain, their southern slopes covered with vegetation watered by the monsoons that only touch this one place, and no other, on the entire 1400 mile southern coastline of the Arabian peninsula.
In ancient times the Himyaritic tribe ruled Dhufar [the region encompassing the Qara Mountains]; they were overturned by Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Archemerid dynasty in 563 B.C. We conclude then that the Himyaritics were in power when Lehi’s colony arrived on the scene in 592 B.C. That people were living in several towns in Dhufar, Oman at the time of Lehi is clear. In addition to the Ubar and it’s sister dated to 2,000 B.C. as noted above, there are two other “ruins of Sumhuram and al-Baleed, sea ports dating to the first millennium B.C.” Further back along the trail, the "soundings in the silt deposits around the great dam of Marib [Yemen] attest to intensive agricultural exploitation there from at least 2000 B.C.
Once again, if the Hilton’s conclusion that the Dhufar region of Oman is Bountiful is correct, Lehi’s colony was not alone there. This was the end (or start) of the frankincense trail, where the frankincense trees grew, so there would also have been farmers, merchants, inns, businesses and other activities. In addition to the trail caravaners, there would have been sailors and ships, for Salalah was also a sea port. It is believed that boats for both the west and the east sailed into this busy little haven, some of them no doubt exporting the famous frankincense.
Nineteen miles outside Salalah (going inland from the seashore) they saw their first frankincense grove. The trees were at first sparse, but became more dense as they continued to ascend the steep mountain. They saw the most trees on the back side of the mountains, where they cover a hundred hills. The tree itself is low, spread out. The limbs appear massive and gnarled. The bark peals off like successive layers of fine tissue paper, or the bark of the birch tree. Any scratch to the green inner layer under the bark produces a flow of chalk-white sap, known as frankincense when dried. There is no doubt the Arab middlemen became wealthy from the incense traffic. An accurate picture of this wealth is described by geographer Strabo, (Book 16 chapter 4, section 19) who wrote about 100 B.C. He said these Arabs “have become richest of all; and they have a vast equipment of gold and silver articles.” [Lynn M. and Hope A. Hilton, Discovering Lehi, pp. 151, 153-56]
The Hiltons note that Salalah is the only place on earth where frankincense trees are indigenous. Seedlings have been transplanted to Yemen and Somaliland on the African coast; but at the time of Lehi, Salalah held a near monopoly. (Gus W. Van Beek, “The Rise and Fall of Arabia Felix,” Scientific America, Dec. 1969, 221:36, 41.) Pliny, a Greek naturalist (A.D. 23-79), described the land of frankincense bounded by the sea and by high cliffs. He said that only 3,000 families were even allowed to see the trees; during pruning and harvest such supposedly polluting factors as women or dead bodies were strictly forbidden. (Pliny, Natural History, H. Rackham tr., London, William Heinemann LTD, 1952, 4:39) [Lynn M. and Hope A. Hilton, “In Search of Lehi’s Trail: Part I, The Preparation,” in the Ensign, September 1976, p. 51]
1 Nephi 17:5 And we did come to the land which we called Bountiful ([Illustration] Proposed reconstruction of the Lehi-Nephi trail along one of the ancient frankincense roads from the Red Sea to Bountiful. Map from the travel notes of the authors. [Lynn M. and Hope A. Hilton, Discovering Lehi, p. 133]
1 Nephi 17:5 And we did come to the land which we called Bountiful (Hilton Theory-[Illustration] Positions of the Khors (Ports) on the Salalah Plain. [George Potter & Richard Wellington, Discovering The Lehi-Nephi Trail, Unpublished Manuscript (July 2000), p. 261]